The Oshkosh Trilogy 01 - The Dark Lake

by Anthea Carson

  I stared at the wrought-iron clock on the wall. My mom hung it there years ago as part of her Cajun decoration scheme. I think our trip to New Orleans inspired her to do it.

  There weren’t many black people the town of Oshkosh. I seemed to know the few who did live there. One was living in an all-white family. The girl was so unhappy she had attempted suicide three times by the age of eighteen. I had always imagined it was due to the difficulty of living in the all-white town of Oshkosh.

  Another was a world-famous anthropologist who taught at our university. Whenever we would see him on the street, wearing his long, beige trench coat, my mom would say, "That's Dr. so and so, he's a brilliant black man."

  Then there was Miriam.

  8

  "What do you suppose got into you?” Miriam asked, leaning back, taking off her glasses and stopping her note-taking for a moment. “This is a major setback for you. You had a few years of sobriety time built up, Jane.”

  "I don't know how it happened, I swear. It's like I … another part of me took over and did that. I didn't even want a drink.” I put my head in my hands, tears began to flow. "I lost my sobriety again."

  "You don't have to do it again, though; you can get right back on the wagon."

  "I hate that expression. They never say that stupid saying at meetings, but they say it everywhere else. Why do you suppose that is?"

  "But you didn't listen to what they said at the meetings."

  "Yes I did. They said I was powerless over alcohol."

  "That's not what they mean."

  "No, they mean once you take the first drink you are powerless, which means that now I'm powerless."

  "That's a bad understanding; that's not what they mean. Would you like to spend a few days in…?”

  "No!"

  I got up to leave.

  "Don't worry, don't worry, I'm not going to send you there against your will."

  "You did before,” I snapped at her.

  "That was because your behavior was a danger to yourself and others. If you act…"

  I flopped into the chair and grabbed a Kleenex.

  "What's wrong with me?"

  Miriam paused and then said, "Let's talk about that."

  "No, I know what you’re thinking, and I don't think that's it."

  “I don’t meant just the party, Jane, I am talking about your refusal to grow up. I think in order to grow up, you need to let go of the…”

  “The past, you want to say. I won’t let go of the past. You think I need to let go of the past. How in the hell, no, how in the fuck am I supposed to live in the present?”

  “That’s the thousand dollar question, isn’t it Jane?”

  Those lazy summer days before Ziggy went off to Yale that went on forever. Days that stretched into nights in the in-between space that separated Siegfried and his sister’s room—like an apartment that belonged to all of us.

  Back then time really was standing still.

  Midnight bong hits, half-forgotten conversations on that wild back porch, forgotten because we were all too stoned to remember them. All the excitement of new music I'd never heard before and can't listen to anymore, slamming screen doors, dim, glowing lightbulbs, empty bottles of Rolling Rock, laughter.

  Who is that standing in the shadows at the party? No … after the party.

  "Krishna's mouth filled up with water, then up to her eyeballs."

  "You saw Krishna.” She put her glasses back on and started writing. She had a file four inches thick on me.

  "There was a bloody hand. There was an angry person chasing us.”

  "In the dream," said Miriam.

  "Right."

  "Are these all things you remember from that night?"

  "No. I can't—can I just … I need some water.” I got up to leave her office and she didn't stop me. I came back from the bathroom. I had filled up a large plastic cup. I sat holding it. My leg shook. I put my hand down to stop it from shaking and that caused her to look at it.

  "The ceramic hand," I said.

  “The one on Krishna’s coffee table?”

  “Yes. Have I talked about that before?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” I asked.

  "What does it?"

  I stared out the window. It was dark outside. I could see the gibbous moon.

  "The moon is not full,” I said.

  "How have you been sleeping otherwise?"

  "I haven't threatened anyone, I haven't threatened to hurt myself. I don't think about hurting myself."

  "But you are hurting."

  I guess I was.

  I managed to get myself to work. While I was there, I got so sick of the tension that could be cut with a knife. I could sense Francine’s hostility the moment I walked in the door. I don't care. I don't want to be there anyway. I walked along the hall with a sense of unease, and performed my duties feeling all the time like someone was behind me watching. I sat uneasily on my break. I hated that feeling.

  Then Francine chose her moment, right around shift close. Make sure they got a full shift out of me first, huh?

  "Why do you think it is me? You have absolutely no reason to assume it's me. How dare you? This is unfair; this is discrimination."

  "I wasn't aware of your minority status,” the smart-ass bitch said. "I should have known there was probably only one of you, though."

  "You are accusing me of stealing, basically. And lying. On what basis? I am not a thief or a liar."

  "You were the only one in her room that night, and she can't make phone calls."

  Although I had no answer to this, I managed to stare until she broke eye contact.

  "You are right; I cannot technically prove that you did it. I can, however, justify terminating your employment here, based on my suspicions, and your chronic lateness and absence."

  "What do you mean chronic? I was absent one day."

  "You've only been working here a short time. That's a ratio of ..."

  "Oh please, don't flaunt your math skills to us plebes."

  "And you're insubordinate.” She closed her notebook. I suppose that was supposed to mean something.

  I felt like a dog walking out of there.

  "Bitch!” I yelled from the parking lot.

  I wanted to throw a brick through the glass door. Ooooh, I wanted to do that so bad. I even picked one up and stood next to my car for a long time thinking about it. I put the brick in the passenger's seat and got on Highway 41 and drove south. I drove and drove. It made me feel free to do that. And I didn't stop until I got right in the heart of downtown Milwaukee. It felt like I was somewhere, finally. I got out.

  I got off on 6th Street, took a right on Wells, and parked on North Riverwalk Way. For a while I just sat there staring out the windshield. I had money in my purse from my job, but I wouldn't be getting any more. I locked the car door and started walking. It was about midnight now. Maybe 12:30. The streets, littered and filthy; the parking meters looked so lonely out here. So many closed businesses, dark, some boarded up. The streetlights didn't seem to cut it.

  I walked about five or six blocks and wandered past a Zak's Tavern.

  "Zak's Tavern," I said aloud, standing outside the rather steep, curved, round, odd-looking set of steps that led up to an ugly, green door. The loud, pinkish sign blinked on and off in large, overly angular letters above the door. The angle made them appear distorted, like in old German expressionist film. I walked up the steps, and the more I ascended them, the dizzier I got. When I put my hand on the door handle, I felt that I would reel backward, and that the opening of it was partly due to my sheer reliance on it as I really did fall back. But then another force pushed me through the door. Whoosh. I was inside. There was a cool staleness to the air. A jukebox with the same unreal colors and quality was off to my right. I'd seen all this before.

  With unsteadiness to my feet, I floated to the bar and sat down on the high stool, steadying myself against the surfa
ce.

  The bartender eyed me from across the bar with an expression that indicated no intention of coming toward me, wiping a glass with a dishtowel.

  "Hey, gimme a vodka gimlet!” I finally yelled.

  He changed his pose not a hair, of course.

  I waited.

  Of course I waited. What else was I going to do?

  He finally ambled over, filled with that same hostile attitude. People like him made me sick.

  "A vodka gimlet? And you mind telling me what I did to deserve this bad service?"

  "You got a problem, lady, there's the door,” he said, and slammed down what passed to him for a vodka gimlet.

  "That's not made right,” I said.

  "Oh it ain't?” He smiled, monstrously.

  "No it isn't, and I stress isn't."

  "I’ve had just about enough of you."

  "It's watered down, and it has no green olive in it."

  "Green olive?” He laughed, raising his ridiculously heavy, red eyebrows. They looked like two cheese doodles above his eyes, to the point where they actually made me hungry.

  "Yes, a green olive. With a red pimento. Very important."

  "You gotta be kiddin' me."

  "No. Don't you know anything about–"

  "It's just not a vodka gimlet without the green olive,” someone said to my right.

  "Oh my God, how long have you been sitting there?” I spun around to look at her, praying she would still be there.

  She was! With a great big 'hey I gotcha' face.

  Krishna, in the mirror across from me, next to the reflections of the very dusty cash register, the bits of cluttered receipts, the wine bottles and the pints of vodka and whiskey. There she was, exotic and Hindu, next to a stunned version of my all-American, blonde self.

  "Come with me." She led me to the restrooms. "Wait till you see what I have."

  "How did you…?"

  "Look at this," she said, and pulled out a beautiful, gold case that snapped open, decorated on the outside with red and gold and green silk, with tiny scenes printed of tigers and women by the water.

  Inside it there was a small, square mirror, a vial of coke, a gold razor blade, and a tiny glass tube. She tapped out a line of the white powder onto the mirror.

  "Go ahead.” She gestured, smiling.

  "Don't let her sneeze, Krishna!” A voice came from the bathroom stall, and then broke into drunken giggling.

  "Is that her in there?” I leaned my head under the stall door.

  Unmistakably, boy's pants. No girl would wear them.

  "Oh my God! How did you two … did you know I was here?"

  Gay bust out of the stall and headed for the coke.

  I leaned over the bathroom counter next to the sinks. I grabbed a paper towel after noticing how disgusting it was and wiped down the sink.

  "Only Jane would clean the sink in a tavern bathroom," Gay said.

  "I'm not putting my face close to that filthy surface."

  I leaned over once it was cleaned, snorted the line, conscious the whole time not to sneeze or blow out accidentally. My long, blonde hair touched the surface.

  "See, my hair would have touched that filthy sink," I said.

  The toilet flushed and Gay came out of the stall, wearing her standard smart-ass expression, and strutted toward the sink to snort another line.

  "Freak?” she greeted.

  The music began, or rather, the pounding, driving, raucous punk noise.

  "The Transistors are playing?” I asked.

  They stared at me.

  "What?” I asked. "Is that really them?"

  "Are you tripping?” Gay asked, and headed out the door into the smoke and amplified buzzing.

  Krishna was closing up her case and replacing it into a little black bag with long, thin shoulder straps.

  "Oh my God, I'm so wasted,” she remarked, and left me alone in there.

  When I went out, they all were there.

  Ziggy leaned against the wall in a green parachute suit. The Transistor boys’ lead singer leaned into the microphone and nearly made out with it. The others leaned back and played bass guitar with what I knew was deliberate cool.

  The lead singer, Walt, grabbed the standing microphone at the end of his last ranting (which seemed to end out of nowhere) and garbled incoherently, but I think he said, "Thanks for coming to our show; this one's for the bartender.” And then began blasting out his next selection, which sounded exactly like the previous one.

  "Krishna,” I yelled in her ear. "Krishna!"

  "What?"

  "I've been meaning to tell you something,” I shouted.

  She didn't seem interested, just kept watching the band, but I went on.

  "I saw a hand rolling up the window."

  "What?” she screamed.

  "Or maybe rolling it down, I am not sure!"

  "I can't hear you!"

  "Someone's hand rolling the window!"

  "No!"

  "No?"

  "We wouldn't have had time!” she screamed.

  "Why not?"

  "We had to get out, silly girl! Besides, you can't roll it down or up under the water."

  I didn't get angry right away. But for some reason, after a few minutes of sitting with this latest piece of news, I began to rage inside. I sat boiling with it for a long time, and fueling it with more alcohol. She stood with her back to me, swaying unsteadily to the loud banging, drinking her beer, her long, black curls spilling down the back over her black coat. She had the collar up. I suddenly felt an urge to yank that collar back and throttle her. I got up and went back to the restroom.

  I looked in the mirror.

  There were worry lines between my brows set there by the years. The crinkle lines spread to the sides and then curved around my smile lines. The lines from laughs and smiling weren't as deep as the crease in my brow. I tried to sober up, but couldn't.

  9

  "Baby girl, you gotta be shittin' with me. Dat girl's your cousin?"

  "Yeah, she stole my driver's license, my credit card, all my identity. So I get pulled over an' I get my ass hauled to jail, what the fuck? I been keepin' it clean, I don't want this shit no mo. I don't want no mo trouble with the police."

  "Dat sounds like her," laughter, hard slap on knee. "Dat girl's a playa."

  I woke up to this sound on a hard bench. My head felt like a steel plate.

  "She's wakin' up. What the hell happened to you, girl?"

  I sat up.

  "Where I am I?” I asked.

  Laughter burst through the cell.

  "You in the city jail, honey."

  "What city?"

  "Milwaukee."

  "Milwaukee?"

  "Hey how much longer till I get processed?” yelled one of them at the door.

  Looking around me, I realized with a mixture of uneasy fear and dull shock that I was the only white one in there. What do you call a room like this, a ‘holding cell’?

  I shut my eyes tight and held my hands over my face. What was the last thing I remembered? Had I thrown up on myself? It didn't seem so, oddly.

  I always was a blackout drunk. Apparently that's when I was my funniest: at least, so I'm told.

  But laughter wasn't what I remembered from last night.

  I remembered screaming, "BITCH!" at who I thought was Krishna. But it couldn't have been, could it? It couldn't have been her.

  "Why didn't you call me back?” I remember asking her.

  I was having a terrific time, and then something took a turn. Things got all twisted. I became so enraged at her.

  Then what happened?

  "You look all messed up, girl. What'd you do?” A tall, lanky girl who lay next to me with her head on a roll of toilet paper laughed.

  I didn't answer her at first, but then, I thought, I don't want to be thought of as rude in here.

  "I'm trying to remember," I said.

  Well, this got a big laugh, and I felt like at least I was a hit in here, a
nd if I just kept quiet, I wouldn't be messed with.

  I had never been arrested before. And when they yanked me into the processing room, I heard several complaints about how whitey was getting special treatment.

  The woman who booked me kept shoving me. Apparently my fingerprints didn't seem to want to take and she kept blaming me, telling me I had attitude problems, and then shoving my fingers harder onto the ink.

  I started crying, and she threatened to throw my sorry ass back in the holding cell if I didn't shut that shit up.

  I sucked it in and tried to cooperate the best I could. I had the strange sensation I was walking the plank.

  "Do I get a phone call?"

  "You'll get it, just shut the hell up and wait."

  I couldn't feel my legs when I walked.

  When I did get the call it turned out I couldn't make it because it was long distance. They let me call collect, though. They weren't going to, and then one of them looked into my eyes and changed his mind.

  I had to tell my mother where I was, but I didn't know how to tell her what to do to get me out of there. She just sounded angry. I was wanting comfort.

  Back in my new cell they made me change into an orange jumpsuit so uncomfortable all I could do was endure it. It was scratchy, and I wasn't allowed to wear my bra underneath it because it had wire in it.

  "Could somebody tell me what I did?” I asked.

  After a hostile, unbelieving stare I got, "You threw a brick through Zak's Tavern.”

  Zak's Tavern?

  Oh my God. Zak's Tavern. The Transistors had played there twenty years ago. I remember the night we drove there. A whole car full of us, we were hauling the band equipment in a van driven by Krishna's brother, listening to tapes made by Krishna and Ziggy. Laughing through the streets of Milwaukee, laughing at billboards with strange, black faces and cartons of milk, billboards we didn't see in Oshkosh, laughing because we were so stoned we laughed at anything that moved or stood still. So much laughter. Twenty years ago.

  That's where I was?

  That night I lay on the hard mat thrown on a metal, human-sized tray that stuck out from a cement wall. There wasn't much left of the night by the time I was brought to my cell. I could see the dawn breaking through a long, narrow sliver of glass. I was alone in there at first, with a metal toilet, a tiny sink, and they gave me a tin cup. I imagined clanging it along the bars, like in the movies.